Monday, 13 May 2013

Gap Yah

When I came down for
breakfast, the door was open and I realised his bed hadn’t been slept in. He’d
gone. Off to explore the world, no doubt. But he was so very young: young and
so, so anxious. What had he taken with him? Did he have enough food – and
water.

We had to find him.

There was some evidence of
which way he’d gone. He’d clearly wandered about the house for a bit, but his
most likely destination was a dark corner under the oven. He’d dropped bits of
sawdust nearby.

We left out food and water,
thinking he’d come out and we’d bring him home, and to safety, but he’d tasted
freedom and he didn’t want to come back. This was his gap year.

We heard various scratching and
gnawing and scuttling, and sometimes glimpse a small twitching nose, but he liked
freedom. He did some Grand Designs-style
home improvements, and shifted half a cubic foot of builders rubbish from a
rat-run between an understairs cupboard and the oven by way of some pipework supplying
a tiny loo.

I set a trail of small cubes
of cheese from beneath the u-bend and soon saw him emerge pouching the cheese
as he scuttled forward. But on coming to end then of the trail in the corridor,
he rapidly turned and fled back to sanctuary beyond the u-bend.

A had the inspired idea of manoeuvring
his i-phone towards where we thought Lawrence had made his home and filmed him.
He was dazzled by the light of the phone but came forward to see if any more
treats were on offer. They weren’t. He fled, and that night he relocated.

That was his big mistake. He
settled for a comfy carpeted corner behind a small, easily moved cupboard. When
we finally caught him, he’d clearly ferried many pouchfulls of food between the
loo and the new location. It seemed so harsh to put him back in his cage again.